How much power over the world’s information should Google have?

We can now access information on any subject instantly wherever we are and get real-time data on anything from weather to financial markets to what our friends are doing via a huge network of interconnected sources.

No-one is creating more of those data connections than Google. But let’s take a look at how Google is using its array of services to create data profiles on each and every one of us.

What Google knows and how:

Google Mail – your name & DOB plus all the content from the emails you receive and send

Google Search – what things you look for (yes everything) across the web

Google Chrome – what websites you visit

Google Analytics – what you then go and do on these websites

Google Checkout – your bank details!!!!! and what you spend on online

Google Maps – where you live, how you travel, and where you want to go

Google Streetview – what your house looks like and the road it is on, even your car outside

Google Now – where you are, where you work, your daily routine and traffic in your area

YouTube – what videos you watch and content you like to consume

Google Content Network – what advertising you respond too

Google Books – what books you read

Google Docs – what files you store and what is in them

Google Photos – what you look like, your family look like and what you get up to

Google Flights – where you want to go on holiday

Google Voice – what your voice sounds like and the vocabulary you use.

It’s actually harder to come up with a list of things Google doesn’t know about you!

Still not convinced? That’s ok Google even came up with a service to show you what they know about you. Test yourself with Google My Activity it should bring home to you how NOTHING escapes their view. And this isn’t even the sneaky stuff!

The dangers of a data monopoly:

Without wishing to scare you with horrible visions of a dystopian future, we do need to think about the possible future risks of a single entity – and an unelected corporate entity at that – having so much data about the entire world and all the people in it that they can monopolise human knowledge itself.

Here’s a small but pretty scary example. In 2013 Sweden issued a list of new words in the Swedish language, one of which was “ungoogleable”.

Google objected and forced the word to be removed from the list. They claimed this was related to their trademark but If Google has the power to start impacting decisions about language itself based on what they do and don’t like then where does that end?

Is this the future equivalent of “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”

If a word can’t be found on the internet because Google decided not to index it, can it ever enter our language and find an existence?

What limitation should there be on Google’s organization of data? To organize data is to inherently have an element of control over it.

How can we ensure Google remain true to universal accessibility of data? The moment they limit access then they are on a dangerous path to authoritarianism. You could argue they are already failing on this count in multiple ways.

And finally how can we ensure that organization and access never becomes ownership? The moment Google or any other corporation seeks to own our data we may become unable to democratically govern our politics, our society, our very culture. We’d effectively lose control of our modern world.

Ok for now panic over but watch this space as I believe some sort of control for Google is required – above and beyond what is in place now.

And it occurs to me that, even to write this article, I am using Google services to research information.

How do I know that Google are allowing me unfettered access via search to all the truthful information out there?

Perhaps if this page mysteriously fails to rank in Google search I’ll know that Orwell’s “Big Brother” does indeed exist in cyber form somewhere on Google’s servers!